I
--St. Pierre, _1887._
One returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season is
lucky to find any comfortable rooms for rent. I have been happy to
secure one even in a rather retired street,--so steep that it is really
dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest one lose one's balance and
tumble right across the town. It is not a fashionable street, the Rue du
Morne Mirait; but, after all, there is no particularly fashionable
street in this extraordinary city, and the poorer the neighborhood, the
better one's chance to see something of its human nature.
One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door neighbor, who
keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin Martinique cigars of which
a stranger soon becomes fond), and who can relate more queer stories and
legends of old times in the island than anybody else I know of.
Manm-Robert is _yon màchonne lapacotte_, a dealer in such cheap
articles of food as the poor live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables,
manioc-flour, "macadam" (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt
fish--_diri épi coubouyon lamori_), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably
bring her the largest profit--they are all bought up by the békés.
Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever any one in the
neighborhood falls sick she is sent for, and always comes, and very
often cures,--as she is skilled in the knowledge and use of medical
herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes. But for these services
she never accepts any remuneration: she is a sort of Mother of the poor
in her immediate vicinity. She helps everybody, listens to everybody's
troubles, gives everybody some sort of consolation, trusts everybody,
and sees a great deal of the thankless side of human nature without
seeming to feel any the worse for it. Poor as she must really be, she
appears to have everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything
to her neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought
bad-luck to lend. And, finally, if anybody is afraid of being bewitched
(_guimboisé_) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with something that
will keep the bewitchment away....